ËÞÁÈÌÛÅ ÖÈÒÀÒÛ

ËÞÁÈÌÛÅ ÖÈÒÀÒÛ
A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. When I read an indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting.
-Henry David Thoreau, Journal, February 19th 1841

Nach allem, was ich ber das Wesen der Liebe gesagt habe, ist die Hauptvoraussetzung fr die Fhigkeit, lieben zu knnen, dass man seinen Narzissmus berwindet. Der narzisstisch Orientierte erlebt nur das als real, was in seinem eigenen Inneren existiert, whrend die Erscheinungen in der Aussenwelt und in den anderen Menschen fr ihn an sich keine Realitt besitzen, sondern nur daraufhin erfahren werden, ob sie fr ihn selbst von Nutzen oder gefhrlich sind. Sein ganzes Erleben ist demnach ausschliesslich subjektiv, auf sich selbst gerichtet, whrend das Erleben seiner Mitmenschen ausgeblendet wird.
Das Gegenteil von Narzissmus ist Objektivitt; damit ist die Fhigkeit gemeint, Menschen und Dinge so zu sehen, wie sie sind, also objektiv, und in der Lage zu sein, dieses objektive Bild von einem Bild zu trennen, das durch die eigenen Wnsche und ngste zustande kommt. Wenn man die zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen betrachtet, kommt man tatschlich zu der berzeugung, dass Objektivitt die Ausnahme und eine mehr oder weniger stark ausgeprgte narzisstische Einstellung die Regel ist.
-Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens

The nuns taught us there were two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.
-Mrs. O'Brien, Tree of Life (2011)

"He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge."
-Thoreau

“The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live.”
-Victor Hugo

"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."
-David Hume

"The world is not a pretty thing when you look at it too close. We fell in love with atrocity. We make pornography and call it news. A daily fix of horror. We think the coming disaster is going to be ecological, that the problem is political, but no. No, the great war is psychological. It's in here--puhkk. We have made ourselves into fat and faded wheezing animals, educated in apathy, amused by cruelty. So, this... we make a new world, something human. And yet, there is a whispering in my ear that tells me I was wrong. and they were right. And the savages-savages-savages had it right all along."
-Two, The Prisoner(2009)

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
-Eric Hoffer

And he who travels through the villages, will at dusk sit with his landlord, and around him the sons and daughters of the house, and the children from the village, and he shall say:
"A man died who promised to be righteous, and he sold righteousness to anyone who gave him money. He fertilised his fields with the sweat of the labourer whom he had called from his own fields. He denied the labourer his wages and ate the poor man's food. He became rich from the poverty of others. He had plenty of gold and silver and precious stones, but the neighbouring farmer could not satisfy his child's hunger. He smiled like a happy man, and there was gnashing of teeth for the man who complained and wanted his right. There was satisfaction in his face, but no milk in the breasts of the mothers."
-Multatuli, Max Havelaar